


The Stars in Their Courses

by zinke



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-22
Updated: 2010-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinke/pseuds/zinke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's why they keep looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars in Their Courses

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ comm sj_everyday's Challenge #128: In Words and Pictures, which asked writers to pen fic inspired by submitted graphics, and artists to create graphics to pair with submitted stories. This story was written to accompany this lovely image by the talented txduck:
> 
> .
> 
> Thanks go to zaleti for her suggestions and advice.

The last time he saw Carter, Jack had forgotten to ask her whether or not it was possible to see M35-117 from Earth. Though in his defense, she'd been scheduled to leave for the SGC – and from there, Atlantis – the very next day and as such, they both had been preoccupied by…other things.

By the time he remembered, she'd already been gone over a week, and by then asking the question felt too sappy and sentimental a thing for either of them and so he let it go.

It hasn't stopped him from looking, though.

The ambient light in DC makes it nearly impossible to see anything save the brightest of stars – just another in a long list of ways that the city seems determined to hem him in. But here at the cabin, settled in one of his aging lawn chairs at the edge of his deck, a cold bottle of beer at his feet and his telescope turned skyward, he has the whole of the heavens at his disposal. It's not quite the same sense of freedom he'd get when walking through the Gate, but these days it's the closest he'll ever get to the way things used to be – and to her.

Leaning in, Jack takes a moment to adjust the aperture, focusing on a particular pinprick of light just above the crook of Orion's elbow. It's the same star he looks for every night, the last before he packs it in and heads to bed.

There's something about this one – the color maybe, or the way it sparkles – that seems strangely familiar.

While logically Sam knows that three million light years is too great a distance for her to be able to see Earth, she can't ignore the undeniable sense of home she feels as she sits on the balcony of her quarters in the gathering darkness, her eyes following the star's leisurely track across this planet's unfamiliar sky.

Until recently, Sam had never really been one for stargazing; she'd always been more inclined to consider the mechanics behind the motion – revolution and orbit, gravitation and polarity – than to contemplate the meaning behind the path a particular star blazed across the cosmos. But that was before she'd had the chance to traverse them, and recognize that there was so much more out there than mathematics and physics could explain.

Even here, where the worlds are strange and the people inhabiting them still strangers, each glittering point of light holds meaning and has a story to tell. Those stars are the reason she is here, so far from home and the people she loves, doing this work and making the hard choices. It's a difficult thing to remember sometimes, when she finds herself missing home – missing him.

And that's why she keeps looking.

 

*fin.*


End file.
